Although the 89th Academy Awards ceremony will forever be remembered for an accountant's inability to tell the difference between two envelopes, the highlight of the night was the message read by Anousheh Ansari and Firouz Naderi on behalf of Asghar Farhadi, who had opted not to travel to Los Angeles to accept the Oscar for Best Foreign Film in protest at President Donald Trump's executive order barring citizens from seven predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States.

Yet, while Farhadi took the opportunity to denounce the `inhumane law' that divided the world into `the us and our enemies categories' that provide a `deceitful justification for aggression and war', the statement he issued with fellow nominees Maren Ade (Toni Erdmann), Hannes Holm (A Man Called Ove), Martin Zandvliet (Land of Mine) and Bentley Dean and Martin Butler (Tanna) was even more pertinent, as they agreed jointly to dedicate the Oscar to `all the people, artists, journalists and activists who are working to foster unity and understanding, and who uphold freedom of expression and human dignity - values whose protection is now more important than ever'. For all its cinematic virtues, this is why The Salesman should go down in screen history. With the imprisonment of Jafar Panahi and the death of Abbas Kiarostami, Farhadi is now at the forefront of Iranian cinema. However, he had done much to revolutionise it with Fireworks Wednesday (2006) and About Elly (2009) before he won his first Oscar with A Separation (2011) and worked abroad for the first time with The Past (2003). A consummate storyteller with a penchant for astute theatricality, Farhadi has explored themes like grief, family bonds, the status of women and masculine honour in shining a light on a theocratic and patriarchal society that remains something of a mystery to most Western observers. Yet, while this intense study of a strained marriage has been widely lauded, it's closer in quality to The Past than those undoubted masterpieces, About Elly and A Separation.

After a credit sequence showing stage sets for a production of Arthur Miller's 1949 Pulitzer Prize winner, Death of a Salesman, the scene shifts dramatically to a Tehran tenement block whose foundations have been undermined by an adjacent building project. As the residents flee amidst fears that the structure might collapse, Shahab Hosseini urges wife Taraneh Alidoosti to head for the street while he rescues an elderly neighbour and her ailing son.

The following morning, Hosseini and Alidoosti return to their apartment to collect some essential belongings and he goes to the school where he teaches literature. He is popular with his students and they engage in lively banter while discussing Gholam-Hossein Saedi's The Cow (which was superbly filmed in 1969 by Dariush Mehrjui). They ask about the play and a cross-cut takes us to a rehearsal, where Hosseini is playing Willy Loman in a scene with Mina Sadati as Biff and Mehdi Koushki as Miss Francis. However, Koushki gets upset when Sadati gets the giggles because she's wearing a bright red raincoat in a scene in which she's supposed to be scantily dressed. Director Maral Bani Adam sends Koushki after her, as she storms out with her young son, Sam Valipour, and Hosseini shakes his head in amused exasperation.

The delay allows Babak Karimi (who is playing Charley) to mention that he has found Hosseini and Alidoosti (who is co-starring as Linda Loman) somewhere to stay while their building is being assessed. He takes them to the flat in a rundown part of the city and Hosseini complains at the mess the authorities have made of solving the accommodation shortage. Looking around, Alidoosti is pleased to be welcomes by a black-and-white cat. But she is so frustrated that the last tenant has left so much of her stuff behind that she crams all her clothing into a cupboard and moves the rest on to the outside landing (although Hosseini feels guilty during a downpour in the night and rushes out to cover everything with a polythene sheet).

Despite needing to sell their car to raise the deposit, Hosseini and Alidoosti remain committed to the production. So, when Hosseini has to stay at the theatre to meet with the censor, Alidoosti goes home alone to tidy the flat. She calls her husband to ask him to pick up some groceries and is about to take a shower when she hears the front doorbell. Presuming Hosseini has forgotten his key, she buzzes him up and leaves the door open. But, when he returns, Hosseini finds blood on the stairs and the bathroom floor and rushes to the nearby hospital, where Alidoosti is being treated for a nasty head injury. He asks the neighbours accompanying her what happened and they suggest that the assailant was a frustrated client of the previous occupant, who had been a prostitute.

Feeling as violated as his wife (especially after he spots money on the bookcase), Hosseini finds it difficult to show Alidoosti any concern or empathy. Instead, he takes the car keys that the attacker left behind (along with his phone) and tries them in the door of every vehicle parked in the vicinity. When he opens a pick-up truck, he moves it to the underground car park, where a neighbour couple agree to give evidence when the police come. But Alidoosti is so traumatised by the incident that she doesn't want an investigation and, while he makes her breakfast. Hosseini struggles to appreciate her feelings. He also finds it hard to understand why she is so frightened to go into the bathroom and why she insists on going on stage that night rather than remaining alone at the scene of the crime.

They agree not to tell the cast and crew what has happened. But, during a scene in which Willy complains about being judged by his neighbours, Alidoosti bursts into tears and rushes into the wings. She tells Adam that she feels unwell after slipping in the shower, but confides in Hosseini that a man in the audience had fixed her with a gaze similar to that of her assailant and she admits that she needs help to deal with her emotions. Rather than comforting her, however, Hosseini goes in search of Karimi to lambaste him for failing to inform them of the previous tenant's profession. Affronted by the implication that he had also been a client, Karimi tells Hosseini that he has yet to cancel the rent cheque and that they can leave with a refund if they so desire.

Cleaning the staircase the next day, Hosseini reassures elderly Ehteram Boroumand that Alidoosti will recover quickly because she had not been badly injured. But, having been first on the scene, she disagrees and chides Hosseini for not taking his wife's predicament more seriously. Yet he loses his temper with Alidoosti when she asks him to take the day off school or let him sit in the car while he teaches. He promises they will look for new lodgings, but wishes she would either report the attack to the police or snap out of the funk that is making her impossible to live with. She is hurt by his inability to accept her trepidation and stalks into the bedroom when he accuses her of smelling because she is too scared to shower. Slamming down his bag, he sits beside her and tries to cajole her into recognising that things could have been a lot worse. But she wishes they had, as her ordeal would be over.

While screening The Cow, Hosseini falls asleep at the back of the classroom and one of the students films him snoring on his phone. When he wakes, Hosseini is less than amused and demands that the youth hands over the phone and threatens to show his salacious photographs to his father. But he died some years before and the boy sits in sullen misery as Hosseini dims the lights and restarts the film. However, another student (who had been affronted when Hosseini failed to defend him from a mithering woman an during a taxi ride) is dismayed by the confrontation, as his confidence in his teacher is further undermined.

Back at the tenement, Alidoosti has to move the truck for Boroumand's husband and he supports her decision not to get the police involved, as she would have to justify why she opened the door to a stranger. She goes to the theatre and is appalled to discover that Karimi knows what happened and has told the rest of the company. Once again, Hosseini is unsympathetic and, when she complains that he has done nothing about finding them a new place, he protests that she is the one with all the spare time on her hands.

Alidoosti feels slighted, but she is even more crestfallen when Hosseini tells her that she has been replaced as Linda. She sits in the dressing-room during the performance and has to explain when Valipour asks why she is no longer in the play. He grumbles about being bored and Alidoosti asks Sadati if the boy can come for a sleepover so she is not alone in the flat. Worried about missing her cue, Sadati agrees and they stop for groceries on the way home. Alidoosti is touched by how bashful Valipour is when he needs to go to the bathroom and her good humour holds when Hosseini gets home and agrees to play with the boy rather than re-parking the pick-up. However, the mood darkens when Hosseini realises that Alidoosti has used the money left by the attacker to buy food and he refuses to let her eat it.

While Alidoosti puts Valipour to bed, Hosseini listens to the messages on the prostitute's answerphone and is furious to hear Karimi billing and cooing on the tape. He opens some of her letters in the hope of finding a clue and Alidoosti pleads with him to let the matter drop. But he retorts that the neighbours know what happened and will expect him to avenge her. Thus, he is furious the next morning to discover that the truck has disappeared and he takes out his frustration on Karimi during a scene between Willy and Charley. However, Karimi takes exception to him ad-libbing insults and warns that he will reply in kind if it happens again.

Determined to track down the perpetrator, Hosseini asks a student whose father is a retired policeman if he could run a check on the truck. He discovers it belongs to delivery boy Mojtaba Pirzadeh and pays a visit to the busy bakery where he works. Hosseini follows Pirzadeh on his rounds and asks if the truck is available for hire and makes arrangements to meet him at the old address while Karimi removes the prostitute's things under Alidoosti's watchful gaze. However, Pirzadeh is too busy and sends future father-in-law Farid Sajadhosseini in his place. He has a weak heart and protests that he won't be able to do much heavy lifting.

Hosseini invites him to sit down and inquires how well he knows Pirzadeh. Puzzled, Sajadhosseini asks whether he has done something wrong and winces when Hosseini describes what happened to Alidoosti. The old man assures him that Pirzadeh is not like that. But Hosseini insists on confronting him in person and asks Sajadhosseini to call him, even though he is out shopping for the wedding with his fiancée. He shrugs that he doesn't know the number, but Hosseini dials it for him and Sajadhosseini sheepishly urges Pirzadeh to call him back when he is alone.

Realising that Sajadhosseini must have lost his phone, Hosseini blocks his attempt to leave and orders him to remove his shoes, so he can see if there is a telltale wound on his feet. Still trying to stall, Sajadhosseini slumps into a chair and claims he feels ill. But Hosseini insists and has to restrain himself when he sees the bandage. Sajadjhosseini swears he has no idea how he cut his foot and denies laying a finger on Alidoosti. However, Hosseini is in no mood to listen to his lies and demands to know whether he had known the prostitute had already left. He explains that she had been pestering him to bring the truck to help her move and they had argued. So, he had called round to make amends and would never have gone into the bathroom if he had thought for one second it would be occupied by anyone other than the woman or her young child.

Refusing to accept Sajadhosseini's assurance that he had never meant to harm anyone, Hosseini vows to show his family the kind of man he is. A scuffle breaks out and Hosseini bundles his wife's attacker into a spare room and locks the door. He goes to the theatre and lies in a coffin, while Alidoosti delivers the final lines of the play (about owning the house and being free). His students applaud enthusiastically on the front row, but Hosseini rushes off the stage and back to the damaged building to conclude his business with Sajadhosseini.

Alidoosti accompanies him and is told to wait in the bedroom while Hosseini summons Sajadhosseini's family. She pleads with him to let the fellow leave and he insists that he feels unwell. But Hosseini is bent on having his macho revenge and orders Alidoosti to keep quiet. Unwilling to see the stranger suffer, she walks out, only to rush back upstairs when Hosseini calls to tell her that the old man has collapsed. Just for a moment, she is left alone with Sajadhosseini, while her husband runs to the truck to see if he has any pills. She checks his breathing and sprinkles water on his face and is so relieved when he comes round that she tells Hosseini that their marriage is over is he breathes a word to the family.

Pirzadeh bolts up the stairs with Shirin Aghakashi, while her mother, Sahra Asadollahi, struggles to negotiate the climb. They fuss over Sajadhosseini, who lowers his eyes in dread, as Asadollahi bustles in and thanks Hosseini and Alidoosti for saving her husband of 35 years. Realising how little she knows her own husband, Alidoosti feels nothing but pity, as Sajadhosseini apologises as he makes to leave. But Hosseini insists on seeing him alone in the bedroom. He asks how much money he left on the bookcase and stuffs some notes into a plastic bag before slapping Sajadhosseini hard across the face.

Reeling, but unbowed, he rejoins his family, only to collapse on the stairs and Pizadeh calls an ambulance and attempts to massage his heart. Shooting her husband a withering look, Alidoosti leaves as the paramedics arrive and fights back the tears as she walks away. Hosseini turns off the power at the mains and Farhadi cross-cuts to the lights going off on the stage. But he ends on close-ups of the mournful Alidoosti having her wig fitted and the stone-faced Hosseini having his make-up applied before the next show, with no hint as the state of their relationship.

Confined spaces have long afforded Farhadi the opportunity to examine at close quarters the restrictive nature of Iranian society. There may not be anything subtle about the crack in the wall above Hosseini and Alidoosti's bed or the fact that their new dwelling is makeshiftly perched on top of a shabby walk-up in a poor part of Tehran. Even the selection of Death of a Salesman at the play the pair perform in is a bit blatant, as it suggests the Iranian Dream is as much an illusion as its American counterpart. But the decision to mount the key scenes on what are essentially stage sets says much about the theatricality of Farhadi's approach and the questions this raises about the freedom a director has to tackle contentious issues in a country in which a woman would rather not report an assault to the police for fear that her innocent actions will make her and her morality the focus of the investigation.

It's ironic, therefore, that when Hosseini finally gets the chance to expose Sajadhosseini in front of his family, he muffs his lines and not only manages to cause greater damage than he had intended, but he also succeeds in alienating the wife whose plight he has never come close to understanding. This breakdown of communication is key to the film's discussion of gender, age and class, as Hosseini is so convinced of his own rectitude and standpoint that he dismisses Alidoosti's protests as glibly as he shouts down his students (two of whom, he wounds with unthinking remarks) and treats Karimi and Sajadhosseini with a contempt that is far more chauvinist than it is enlightened.

Invoking both Alfred Hitchcock and Michael Haneke, Farhadi takes a risk in making his principals so difficult to engage with, but the brief interlude with Valipour hints at the domestic idyll that Hosseini and Alidoosti might have shared before their marriage was, literally, rocked to its foundations. Alidoosti conveys much with looks and silences, while also giving a masterclass in demonstrating how to use body language while wearing a hijab and modesty clothing. Hosseini (who won the Best Actor prize at Cannes) also excels, as he loses sight of his wife's needs in trying to live up to imposed expectations of manhood. But the support playing is also first rate, with Sajadhosseini particularly impressing as the cowardly hypocrite who becomes the victim of the decent, but controlling Hosseini's misguided machismo.

The production values are also admirable, with Keyvan Modhadam's sets being crucial to Farhadi's conceit, while Hossein Jafarian's use of a moving camera for everyday life and a tripod during the stage sequences deftly reinforces the contrasts between art and existence. In truth, Farhadi doesn't integrate the Miller passages as smoothly as he might, while the school episodes also feel a little strained. But he refuses to be hurried in setting his scene and steadily builds suspense before springing the climactic surprises, which spurn the easy resolutions most audiences would expect in favour of a wholly realistic ambiguity.

In her three features to date, German writer-director Maren Ade has proved herself adept at producing what might be termed `two-handers'. Having fashioned engaging roles for Eva Löbau and Daniela Holtz in The Forest for the Trees (2003) and Birgit Minichmayr and Lars Eidinger in Everyone Else (2009), Ade has now created her finest characters to date in Toni Erdmann, a father-daughter comedy with a range of satirical subtexts that provides career-defining opportunities for Peter Simonischek and Sandra Hüller. A firm favourite with many to win the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, this is an early contender for the end-of-year Top 10, although the 162-minute running time might persuade some to hold fire until it arrives on disc or download.

Having separated from his wife and drifted apart from his daughter, Ines (Sandra Hüller), sixtysomething Winfried Conradi (Peter Simonischek) ekes out an eccentric existence in a provincial German town. When not putting on disguises to fool delivery drivers, he gives piano lessons and dons ghoulish make-up to accompany the children at the local school. He dotes on his elderly mother, Annegret (Ingrid Burkhard), and his ageing dog, Willi. But he is so out of the loop that he feels like an outsider at Ines's birthday party and, so, when Willi dies suddenly, he shows up unannounced at Ines's office in the Romanian capital, Bucharest.

Donning sunglasses and a pair of false teeth, Winfried walks alongside Ines in the lobby. But she ignores him and dispatches assistant Anca (Ingrid Bisu) to find him a hotel and pass on an invitation to join her at a reception at the American Embassy. Ines cautions Winfried to be on his best behaviour, as she needs to convince oil company boss Henneberg (Michael Wittenborn) to retain her consultancy firm on a deal to outsource maintenance work that will make hundreds redundant. However, Winfried jokes that he sees so little of Ines that he has had to hire a surrogate daughter to cut his toenails. She forgives him, however, when Henneberg and his wife Natalja (Victoria Malektorovych) invite them for a drink with a selective group of contacts at his hotel. But, in her eagerness to avoid being shouted down by a pushy male rival, Ines lets slip some confidential information and she senses that Henneberg is less than amused when Winfried attempts to create a diversion by popping in his protruding dentures.

Even when the others say their goodbyes, the suffocating sense of awkwardness intensifies when Winfried jokes that he intends staying for a month and Ines struggles to hide her dismay. But she allows him to stay at her apartment and seems genuinely upset to hear of Willi's demise. Moreover, she is touched (if a little puzzled) by the elaborate designer cheese grater he has bought for her birthday.

The next morning, Ines lets Winfried tag along when she goes for a massage at a health spa and he is taken aback when she demands free food and drink in compensation for the clumsiness of her masseuse. He asks if she is happy in Bucharest, but she deflects the question and is relieved to receive a summons from Natalja to accompany her to Europe's biggest shopping mall. Winfried watches a man teach his grandson to skate on the ice rink and buys ingredients to make spaghetti. He accuses Ines of not being human because she is so wedded to her job and she suggests he has lost focus and ambition after he lets her oversleep and she misses an appointment to take Henneberg clubbing.

Realising he is in the way, Winfried returns to Aachen and Ines cries as she waves him off from her balcony. But she has a big meeting with boss Gerald (Thomas Loibl) and his assistant Tim (Trystan Pütter) en route to putting their proposals to Hanneberg. As she has stubbed her toe while folding the sofa bed, Ines gets blood on her blouse and makes Anca change clothes before she makes her presentation. Sensing that Henneberg is wavering, she also takes the initiative when Dascalu (Alexandru Papadopol) suggests the unions will oppose her proposals. While admiring her ruthless approach, Gerald warns her to be more of a team player and, while Anca tidies the room, Ines calls Winfried to check he got home safely, while looking down on a shanty garden, as a mother tends to her children.

When she meets friends Steph (Lucy Russell) and Tatjana (Hadewych Minis) for dinner, however, she insists she had the worst weekend ever and is busy bad-mouthing Winfried when they are interrupted by a stranger at the bar. He introduces himself as Toni Erdmann and declares that he has come to Romania to console tennis legend Ion Tiriac because his tortoise has died. Tatjana and Steph engage him in conversation, while Ines shuffles her feet because she has recognised Winfried in one of his disguises. She ushers her friends to their table and is aghast when Steph gives Toni her business card and invites him to call her if he needs anything during his stay. Following him out of the restaurant, Ines sees her father disappear in a stretch limo and she wonders what on earth he is doing.

The next day, he wheedles his way on to the roof garden of her office and breaks wind loudly while Ines is discussing strategy with Gerald. He has persuaded Hanneberg to go for the most drastic downsizing option and has also asked Ines to handle the negotiations with Romanian lynchpin Illiescu (Vlad Ivanov). She is pleased to hear Hanneberg has faith in her, but is annoyed with Gerald for delaying her promised promotion to Shanghai and is left close to tears when Toni butts into the conversation and offers to use his life-coaching skills to smooth the way with Hanneberg and bolster the flagging spirit of Ines's team.

She goes to Tim's hotel room and they joke about how no one knows they are lovers because of their work rivalry. Ines makes him masturbate over a petit four and consumes it with more ennui than arousal. She returns to keeping her distance at a business reception, where Toni explains how he owes a debt of gratitude to his father for teaching him how to use a cheese grater. Gerald seems impressed by Toni's rapport with Hanneberg, but the other guests are bemused by his boorish antics. He is disappointed, however, when he sees Ines do a line of cocaine with Tim and Tatjana and looks on with disdain as the pair flirt with each other with a champagne bottle on the nightclub dance floor.

Having failed to catch up with Ines before she heads home in a taxi, Winfried returns to his room and wearily removes his disguise. Feeling guilty for intruding into Ines's life, he lets himself into her apartment the next morning and gives her a fright when he pops out of her shoe cupboard. He tries to cheer her up by slapping on handcuffs because of her drug taking, but he discovers he has lost the key and Ines has to get the company chauffeur to take her to a petty crook pal to get him to pick the lock.

Arriving at the oil plant managed by Illiescu, Ines informs him that Toni is a new employee on a fact-finding mission. They visit a pipeline and Toni makes a joke to one of the workers about a broken seal that results in him getting the sack. Sidling away in dismay, Toni goes to relieve himself in a rundown garden abutting the works and is embarrassed when the owner not only allows him to use his bathroom, but also insists that he takes some apples from his tree. Once again bemused by her father, Ines falls asleep in the car back to the city and wakes to find Tony about to pay a call on Flavia (Victoria Cocias), who is under the impression he is the German Ambassador after they met at Gerald's soirée. While her sister Dorina (Cezara Dafinescu) and friend Ana (Ozama Oancea) show Ines (rejoicing under the pseudonym Miss Schnuck) to paint Easter eggs, Toni chats to Flavia and offers to sing a song before they leave. She belts out Whitney Houston's `The Greatest Love of All', but doesn't seem very convinced about the lyrics and their eulogy to self-belief and storms off, leaving Winfried to come clean about his deception to Flavia, who understands that family can be complicated and invites him to stay for dinner.

Ines gets home to find the caterer waiting to deliver items for her birthday reception. But, just as the guests start to arrive the following afternoon, she has a last-minute change of mind about her dress and winds up opening the door to Steph in her underwear when the zip jams. She explains to Gerald and Tim that she is hosting a naked party to help with team bonding, but they opt out and Steph also leaves when Ines orders her to strip. Anca comes naked, however, and is shocked when Winfried arrives wearing a hairy Bulgarian Kukeri folk costume (borrowed from Flavia). The returning (and now nude) Gerald is equally caught unawares when Winfried taps him on the shoulder. But they all take the creature in good part, even though Ines can't explain its presence. She rushes after her father when he leaves and, wearing a bathrobe, hugs him in the nearby park before she returns to her gathering and he asks the receptionist at the hotel to help him remove the outsized head.

Some months later, Ines returns to Germany for her grandmother's funeral. After the service, Winfried goes into the garden as his sister Irma (Klara Höfels) asks Ines if there is anything she would like to take as a keepsake. She is about to take up a new job in Singapore and wanders outside to find her father. Knowing this will be the last time he will see her for a while, he waves away her attempt to apologise for saying he lacked focus. But he smiles sadly, as he concedes that he spends a lot of time remembering little moments from her past that he was too busy to appreciate as they were happening. She borrows his dentures and puts on one of Annegret's old hats and Winfried potters off to fetch his camera. Left alone, Ines gazes into the distance, taking in a scene she will never see again and wondering what the future might hold.

A cross between Gérard Depardieu and Sir Les Patterson, Toni Erdmann is one of the most curious cinematic creations of recent times. In some ways, he resembles the furry hero of Hayao Miyazaki's Studio Ghibli anime, My Neighbour Totoro (1988), as he tries to protect Ines from the miscreants circling her and to persuade her that there is more to life than work. Austrian stage actor Peter Simonischek plays Winfried/Toni with a flash of Klaus Kinski in his eyes. Yet the mischief is often superseded by a nostalgia and regret that prompts him to make an impromptu and (initially) unwelcome visit to Bucharest and then to keep popping up, in spite of the mortifying silence while waiting for the lift that should have alerted him to the fact that Ines is more than capable of standing up for herself.

Or is she? Despite brushing aside suggestions she is a feminist in a shamelessly chauvinist milieu, Sandra Hüller knows the rules of her game and how to bend them to her advantage. She uses sex to tame the ambitious Trystan Pütter, while playing on Thomas Loibl's acute insecurity at being so dependent upon her. Yet, when important client Michael Wittenborn needs someone to go shopping with his trophy wife, Hüller is deputised rather than Ingrid Bisu (although it has to be said that Hüller is not averse to treating her Romanian assistant like a menial, even though she is the only person to accept the nude party dictat without quibbling). She also fails to see through the false friendship offered by Hadewych Minis and Lucy Russell and is only able to recognise the good intentions of her father's cumbersome interventions when he is wearing a disguise that goes way beyond Toni's mop top and teeth rather than when he is accompanying her through her gutsy song rendition.

Exceptional though the go-getting Hüller and the pranksterish Simonischek are, they owe much to the wit and poignancy of Maren Ade's gleefully unpredictable scenario and her courage to pace the picture in a way that enables them to explore and embrace their characters. Harking back to the anarchic heyday of the screwball comedy, Ade bucks convention by dispensing with the romcom aspects to give something like Gregory La Cava's My Man Godfrey (1936) a father-daughter feel. But she also leaves room to discuss sexism in the workplace, the decline of business ethics in the age of globalisation, the impact of EU membership and German patronage on post-Communist societies, and the breakdown of communication within modern families.

Although they resist drawing attention to themselves, Silke Fischer's production design, Gitti Fuchs's costumes and Heike Parplies's editing are all superb. But the standout technical contribution is Patrick Orth's cinematography. When not cleaving close to Hüller and Simonischek, the camera peeks out of car windows to capture the rundown domestic and industrial architecture that betrays the country's failure to move on from the overthrow of Ceausescu and the lack of genuine interest that foreign investors take in the plight of the core Romanian population. But, for all its astute asides on the state of the world, this is an intimate study of two people reaching out to make amends before it is too late. And rarely has such a potentially sentimental story been told in such a boldly anarchic manner.

The Romanian New Wave has been one of the few meaningful cinematic movements in Europe since Das Neue Kino and one of its leading lights, Christian Mungiu, produces another scathing critique of post-Ceausescu society in Graduation. Combining stylistic grace with stark realism, the story of a deluded man's descent into despair and disrepute explores the lot of the average person without the kind of patronising sentimentality common to so many current socio-political tracts. Yet Mungiu also demonstrates the compassionate understanding of human nature that makes his films (including the Palme d'or-winning 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, 2007) so authentic and so acute.

While wife Lia Bugnar languishes in bed with a headache and 18 year-old daughter Maria Dragus prepares for school, middle-aged hospital doctor Adrian Titieni charges into the courtyard of his soulless Cluj tenement block to catch the miscreant who had just thrown a stone through his window. He curses ever having returned to Romania in 1991 and surveys his surroundings by the railway line with a shudder of disgust. As he drives Dragus to school, therefore, he reminds her of the importance of passing her exams so she can study abroad. More interested in her motorcycle lesson with Rares Andrici than revision, Dragus asks her father to drop her off near a construction site so he can beat the traffic into work.

However, Titieni takes a detour to visit Malina Manovici, a teacher at Dragus's school who has been his mistress since he treated her after she was involved in a bridge accident. They are canoodling on the bed when he receives a call that Dragus has been attacked and is at the hospital. Brushing off questions from Bugnar about why it took him so long to the to the ER, Titieni asks assistant Orsolya Moldován to contact his police inspector buddy Vlad Ivanov before learning from the duty doctor that Dragus has sprained her wrist in fending off the assailant, whose failure to achieve an erection spared her further trauma.

Accompanying his daughter to the police station, Titieni proves so fretful while she makes her statement that Ivanov takes him to one side to calm him down. They discuss her university prospects and Titieni boasts she has been taking extra English lessons with Manovici so can secure a scholarship in London. Ivanov lets slip that he will find his daughter a job on the force and nepotism rears its head again when sketch artist Adrian Vãncicã asks Titieni if he can use his influence to get Vice-Mayor Petre Ciubotaru (who just happens to be his godfather) moved up the waiting list for a liver transplant. Ivanov concurs that Ciubotaru has always been a good friend to the police and suggests that Titieni's help would impact upon the efficiency of the investigation. However, he draws the line at Vãncicã making Dragus's attacker look like a recently escaped convict so they could frame him for the crime.

Driving home, Dragus is wondering who broke their window when Titieni hits a stray dog in the road. They say nothing more about it, but Titieni is keen to prevent the rumour spreading that his daughter has been raped. He ticks off Bugnar when she uses the word and asks if she knew that Dragus was no longer a virgin. She insists that girls find it difficult to discuss this kind of subject with their fathers and wishes he would let her grow up and start making her own decisions. He is adamant, however, that she should sit her exam the next day and reminds her of the consequences of failure. Bugnar disapproves of his fixation with her future. But he is the one to get up (from the sofa where he sleeps) when Dragus starts crying in the night and he tries to console her.

Leaving the next morning to discover that someone has tampered with his windscreen wipers, Titieni has to barge his way into the school to prevent exam supervisor Gelu Colceag from disqualifying Dragus because a pupil had once smuggled a crib sheets inside his plaster cast. Taking a detour to check out the crime scene (where he spots a CCTV camera in operation), Titieni visits his elderly mother, Alexandra Davidescu, who is against Dragus studying abroad and ticks off him for mollycoddling her. Davidescu is in poor health, but Titieni refuses to fuss over her and proves equally indifferent when Manovici (who already has a young son, David Hodorog) informs him that her period is late.

Having spoken to Dragus after the exam, Titieni realises she is going to struggle to get her grades because she failed to answer the last two questions. He goes to see Ivanov and agrees to help Ciubotaru with his transplant in return for his assistance in tweaking Dragus's marks. Titieni warns Ciubotaru that he will be undergoing a major procedure and that there is no guarantee of success. But he is sufficiently grateful to contact Colceag (who owes him a favour, as Ciubotaru once saved his wife from the sack) and he agrees to see Titieni during his wife's birthday party. He regrets that it's too late to amend her Romanian test, but suggests they can ensure she gets top marks for maths if she crosses out the last three words on the first page of her exam booklet so that the marker can recognise her paper.

Feeling guilty for dismissing Manovici's news, Titieni pays her a quick call and she introduces him to Hodorog, who is wearing a wolf mask. He also searches the undergrowth near where he hit the dog and bursts into tears as he trains his torch on the ground. Arriving home, he receives a lecture from Bugnar about the immorality of cheating and wishes he would let Dragus make her own mistakes. However, he reminds his wife that she has a tedious job in a library because the system is harder to bend than they had hoped it would be on returning from exile and he uses a similar argument in urging Dragus to mark her paper so that she gets the start in life that she deserves.

Shrugging off another act of vandalism on his car, Titieni drives Dragus to the exam centre. She asks why he always beeps when they pass the housing estate and he fibs that it's merely a safety precaution. He calls on Ivanov to survey the CCTV footage and asks for a printout, as something bothers him about the shot. At the hospital, he tells Ciubotaru that he is going to need a preparatory operation and the vice-mayor cries because he is certain he is going to die. He tries to foist an envelope of cash on to Titieni, but he refuses it, as things are complicated enough as it is.

While waiting for Dragus to emerge from her exam, Titieni bumps into Andrici, who recalls how the teachers at his sports college let the top students cheat in exams because they devoted so much of their time to training. Titieni asks why he was late to meet Dragus on the morning she was attacked and he protests that his bus was delayed. But, when Titieni asks whether he had called the cops to report the assault, he insists that there was no sign of Dragus when he arrived and that he had presumed she had got tired of waiting for him and gone to school. She interrupts them with kisses for each and assures her father that the exam went well. But Titieni is dismayed by the thought that Dragus might have set her mind on going to the local university in order to stay close to her boyfriend.

Exhausted from trying to keep so many balls in the air, Titieni hopes to have a relaxing time with Manovici. But she is concerned that Hodorog's speech impediment will prevent him from going to a good school and she wonders whether she has a future with Titieni when he explains that it will be difficult to wangle him cut-price therapy. They are disturbed when Dragus knocks to tell him that Davidescu has had a fall and he rushes to her flat to tend to her. Dragus overhears him telling the paramedics that her grandmother is more fragile than she had imagined and she asks why he hid the truth. She also demands that he confesses his affair to Bugnar and threatens not to sit her final exam unless he comes clean.

He arrives home to find Bugnar packing his clothes into a suitcase. She has long known about the affair, but feels Titieni has undermined all they have taught Dragus by seeking to influence her grades. Too tired to protest that he has only had their daughter's future in mind, he agrees to move out. He is frustrated that Bugnar intends following Dragus wherever she goes and is ready to sell the apartment, even if it leaves her husband homeless. But knows this is not the time or place and shuffles out clutching a rucksack.

Concerned by not seeing Dragus at the exam centre the following morning, Titieni goes to work to find prosecutor Emanuel Parvu and his assistant Lucian Ifrim waiting for him. They wish to question Ciubotaru, who is facing criminal proceedings. But Titieni insists on protecting a sick patient, even though it is made abundantly clear that his own phone calls to the vice-mayor have been tapped and that he (and his family) might get caught up in the investigation. Parvu admires Titieni for adhering to his oath and admits he might also be tempted to step in if his own child was having difficulties. But he cautions Titieni that he could suffer if the truth came out.

Titieni seeks out Ivanov, who is on a training exercise in the hills. He apologises for getting him involved with Ciubotaru and suggests digging for dirt on Parvu and Ifrim. But Titieni has no stomach for another fight and says he will take his chances and hope to keep Dragus out of trouble. With this in mind, he also summons Andrici to the construction site and shows him the CCTV printout placing him at the scene much earlier than he has claimed. Andrici denies failing to help Dragus and throws Titieni to the floor when he tries to threaten him. He also mocks him for thinking he can control Dragus, as she will always do what she wants.

Needing to find Dragus so she can attend an identity parade at the police station, Titieni goes to the exam centre. But there is no sign of his daughter and Bugnar is in no mood to discuss matters when he drops into her library. Instead, she demands his house keys and suggests that he calls ahead whenever he plans to visit. Hurt by her attitude, he asks when they became such implacable enemies, but she refuses to answer. He is also given the brush off by Colceag when he tries to warn him about the investigation into Ciubotaru. But, most crushingly of all, he learns that Dragus had not marked her maths paper and that he his efforts on her behalf have been in vain.

At the police station, Ivanov tries to browbeat Dragus into being more supportive of her father. But she refuses to speak to him for accusing Andrici of cowardice and she gets upset when the last man in the line-up loses his temper as he reads out the words used by the attacker. She insists he is not the culprit and rushes into the street. Titieni follows and tries to apologise. He commends her for doing what she thought best about her final exam and accepts her invitation to come to her last day celebration. She nods when he swears that he has only been trying to do the right thing and rides off on her motorbike.

Taking the bus home, Titieni thinks he recognises a figure at a stop in a rough part of town. He creeps along the poorly lit street and gets nervous when dogs start barking and a bottle breaks behind him. Fearing he is out of his depth, Titieni beats a hasty retreat and seeks sanctuary with Manovici. She makes him soup and asks if he will keep an eye on Hodorog while she keeps a doctor's appointment. But she makes him sleep on the couch and he realises that she is probably going for an abortion.

The next morning, Hodorog throws a stone at a boy who pushes in on the climbing frame and Titieni tries to explain why there are ways of dealing with injustice. He takes the child to the hospital, where Modován informs him that Ciubotaru has suffered a heart attack and that the prosecutors are waiting for him in her office. The vice-mayor's widow urges Titieni to take the envelope he had previously refused and he offers it to Parvu as evidence. He regrets having to drag the doctor into the investigation and promises to try and keep Dragus out of the case. Resigned to whatever else fate has to throw at him, Titieni leads Hodorog past a mural depicting an idealised scene of medical excellence.

Returning Hodorog to his mother, Titieni wanders out to see Dragus and her classmates. He asks after Bugnar and she says she is doing fine. She also admits that she feigned a crying attack at the end of her key paper and was given extra time to finish. Turning to face her father, Dragus asks if she did the right thing and he merely says she must always follow her own instinct. She asks him to take a photo of her class for a keepsake and he urges them to look happier as the shutter clicks.

Following in the footsteps of the misguided protagonist in Cristi Puiu's Aurora (2010), Adrian Titieni's Transylvanian medic finds himself woefully ill-equipped to deal with the grim realities of life in democratic Romania. The more he tries to work the system to his advantage, the further he strays from his comfort zone. Yet no one is grateful for any of the sacrifices he makes and Titieni winds up being judged for his failings while others suffer for their perceived benefits. Interestingly, the three women in his life manage to claw some independence from the wreckage of his flailing chauvinism, although Dragus has clearly thrown in her lot with a shifty slacker unworthy of her affection, while Manovici will have to deal with an alienated lad who sees violence as a solution to his problems.

Lacing this lament for his homeland's failure to resolve its issues with the past with the unflinching acerbity that characterised Beyond the Hills (2013), Mungiu shared the Best Director prize at Cannes with Olivier Assayas (for Personal Shopper). As always, his evocation of place is exceptional, with Simona Paduretu's considered interiors cannily complementing Tudor Vladimir Panduru's views of the less salubrious parts of Romania's second-biggest city. The use of Handel's aria `Ombra mai fu' on the soundtrack to emphasise Titieni and Bugnar's aspirations is also inspired, as Mungiu invites comparisons with Daniel Auteuil's slow slide into self-realisation in Michael Haneke's Hidden (2006).

Yet, despite Titieni's reprehensible failure to rise above the societal dysfunction he proclaims to despise, it's still possible to sympathise with his good intentions. His sole saving grace may be the fact that Dragus still loves him, regardless of his mistakes. But, while Mungiu refuses to pat Titieni on the back for refusing backhanders, he does keep in mind that is he a victim of the hypocrisy and corruption of the Communist era, when backs were forever being scratched in the name of sheer survival. Moreover, he implies that it's better that he followed the example of over-protective mother Luminita Gheorghiu in Calin Peter Netzer's Child's Pose (2013) than Charles Bronson's vengeful vigilante father in Michael Winner's Death Wish (1974). Consequently, such emotional restraint suggests that Mungiu's storytelling is now as measured and mature as his visual style.

Cinema will always be at a disadvantage when it comes to reacting to changes in the world order, as films take so long to develop and produce. In our tumultuous times, however, film-makers need to hold the establishment to account and few are more willing to rattle cages than the Scottish screenwriter Paul Laverty. In addition to helping Ken Loach win two Palmes d'or, Laverty has also forged a burgeoning partnership with the Spanish director Iciar Bollain. To date, they have turned the spotlight on the Bolivian water war in Even the Rain (2010) and the Nepalese education system in Katmandu (2011). But they widen the net to consider the impact of globalisation and recession on traditional ways of life and the family unit in The Olive Tree.

Until recently, 20 year-old Anna Castillo's family had grown olives in the small town of Canet in Spain's Castellon province. However, changes in agricultural practices and the failure of a restaurant business drove father Miguel Angel Aladren into battery farming chickens and Castillo goes about her chores in a giant shed with little joy. She amuses herself by prank calling uncle Javier Gutiérrez, while he is lunching at the local café. But she is concerned by the steady decline of grandfather Manuel Cucala, who has never recovered from the sale of his favourite olive tree some years before.

When aunt Carme Pla informs Castillo that Cucala has wandered off again, she roams the parched countryside on her motorbike until she finds him in an abandoned olive grove. As they sit in silence, the song of a greenfinch sparks a flashback to when she was eight (Inés Ruiz) and the doting Cucala had told her that his trees dated back to Roman times. He had shown her how to graft cuttings and let her play in the shade of the prized tree whose gnarled trunk resembled the face of a monster But, now, he remains locked in his thoughts and seems so set on death that he has stopped eating.

Following a dinner table argument with Aladren, Castillo goes clubbing with pals Maria Romero and Paula Usero and upsets besotted co-worker Pep Ambròs by having a one-night stand with a stranger. However, Castillo feels guilty in the morning and angrily pulls a strand out of her hipster mullet before taking out her frustration on Ambròs's bullying trucker boss, Paco Manzanedo, by egging his car windscreen. But Ambròs is cross with her for jeopardising his job and Castillo seeks solace with Cucala, who is sitting by the pile of stones marking the place where his tree had stood.

She sings a folk song in the hope of triggering a memory and recalls the day Juanma Lara had come to uproot the tree that Aladren and Gutiérrez had sold for €30,000 in order to launch their beach-front restaurant. Cucala had raged at his sons for betraying history and they had complained that he had been a bad father who had neglected them as kids and exploited them as grown-ups. Desperate to save it, the young Castillo had climbed up the tree and sobbed while clinging to its branches. But Cucala had fetched her down so that the digger could do its work.

Refusing to believe that her grandfather is suffering from dementia and might be better off in a home, Castillo insists he is in mourning for the tree and all it symbolises. Accompanied by her uncle, she goes to the disused restaurant and rummages round for the documents that could help her discover the tree's current whereabouts. Gutiérrez tries to explain to his niece that Cucala was something of a tyrant in his day, but she is more vexed the fact that Aladren and Gutiérrez sold the tree to bribe the mayor into letting them build near the seashore. When Gutiérrez tries to defend his brother, Castillo asks why he did nothing when she was sexually abused by the bartender while she was waitressing and he is left alone to regret his own parental shortcomings, as he had broken up with wife Cris Blanco after the restaurant and his trucking business had collapsed during the Credit Crunch.

Visiting the garden centre that had handled the transplant, Castillo tries to find out who bought the tree. But she is dismissed with such disdain by Lara that his timid sister, Pilar Garcia, rebels against him and gives Castillo enough information for Romero to discover online that the olive tree now resides in the lobby of the Dusseldorf offices of RRR Energy, who have adopted it as their logo. Racking her brains for options, Castillo goes for a midnight stroll through the fields and the rustle of the breeze in the foliage prompts her to promise Cucala that she will bring the tree home no matter what it takes.

Summoning Gutiérrez and Ambròs to the café, Castillo tells them that the tree was bought by a deeply religious man, who bequeathed it to his local church. Knowing she is lying, Romero and Usero look on with trepidation, as Castillo explains that the pastor has agreed to let them take the tree for nothing in order to heal an old man. When Gutiérrez asks how a German speaks such good Spanish, Castillo fibs that he had been a missionary in Guatemala. Moreover, she points out that the Schengen border policy will make it easy to get there and back without permits over the upcoming holiday weekend. But she quickly loses her temper when Ambròs and Gutiérrez express misgivings and she storms out vowing to get to Dusseldorf alone.

Having shown Usero how to feed and clean the chickens, Castillo thanks Romero for using her social media connections to hook her up with Ana Isabel Mena, who will be her guide in the Rhineland. But she is relieved when Gutiérrez and Ambròs turn up in a crane flatbed that the latter has `borrowed' from Manzanedo for the 1659 km trip. Deciding to withhold the truth until she has no other option, Castillo feels a pang when Gutiérrez reveals that he has lied to Blanco for the first time since they split up, as she thinks he has gone to collect an overdue debt. So, when they stop at a garage, she Skypes Mena and begs her and German flatmates Pia Stutzenstein, Hanna Werth and Janina Agnes Schröder to come up with a feasible plan.

As they drive through the Spanish countryside, Gutiérrez decides to pay a call on a former client who owes him €90,000. No one is home, but Gutiérrez steals a poolside replica Statue of Liberty and lashes it to the back of the truck. A gang of bikers give them the thumbs up on the motorway, but they are also mooned by the lads in a passing white van. While Gutiérrez enjoys causing a stir (with seemingly no police interest in his theft), Castillo learns that Mena has set up a Facebook page to advertise her crusade. She and Schröder also discover that RRR promotes open-cast mining and deforestation and she suggests that the campaign should revolve around the hypocrisy of using a tree in its branding when its policies are so environmentally unsound.

Werth is unimpressed, however, and dismisses Castillo as a quixotic dreamer, while Stutzenstein ticks off Mena and Schröder for denouning RRR when they would be lost without central heating and hot showers. Ambròs is amused that Castillo spends so much time texting and suspects that her plan is anything but foolproof. However, he promises to say nothing to Gutiérrez, even though he is hurt when she confesses she could never date him.

This revelation and the growing realisation she is out of her depth causes Castillo to pluck another strand from her hair in a service station washroom. But she returns to the cafeteria to find that Manzanedo has sacked Ambròs for taking the lorry without permission and their heated discussion attracts the attention of an elderly security guard. Ambròs insists on pressing on, but he tells Castillo that she may have to accept defeat and move on, as he had been forced to do after a bad tackle put paid to his chances of playing in La Liga for Valencia.

As a thunder storm lights up the horizon, the trio crosses into Germany. A police car overtakes them and Gutiérrez admits to feeling inferior to the Germans because they always seem to good at everything. They reach Dusseldorf with no further alarms, however, and leave the truck in a riverside car park to walk to the offices where Castillo claims they need to sign the release forms. Gutiérrez begins to wonder what is going on when he spots the olive tree in the middle of the foyer. But Castillo is so moved to see it again that she stands transfixed amidst memories of childhood games. Indeed, it is only when she has been bustled outside by security guards that she snaps out of her reverie and faces the wrath of her humiliated uncle, who is less annoyed that she had lied to him than he is disappointed that she had not been able to trust him.

Ambròs admits that he had suspected the entire enterprise was bogus from the outset. But he allowed his feelings for Castillo to cloud his judgement and she blames her travelling companions for not having the sense to realise she was duping them. Gutiérrez is mildly amused by the idea that everything is suddenly his fault, but he returns to the lorry and smashes the Statue of Liberty with a sledgehammer. He asks Ambròs if he is ready to go home, but he declares he going to stay with Castillo, as she has made up her mind not to leave without the tree. Shaking his head in sympathy with Ambròs for falling for such a firebrand, Gutiérrez gathers his belongings and joins her on the wall outside RRR's headquarters. They even get the giggles over a sandwich at the ludicrous nature of their situation.

The company refuse to discuss the tree and keep the Spaniards under close surveillance. But Mena shows up with some placards and reassures Castillo that she has support in the city. Indeed, that night, a small, but vociferous band of protesters marches to the plaza and denounces RRR in front of the waiting news cameras. The police join the security guards in trying to keep the demonstrators at bay. But someone opens the front door and Castillo runs to the tree and clambers into its branches, as she had done when she was a girl. Flashbulbs pop around Gutiérrez, as he phones Aladren to tell him what his daughter has achieved. However, tears well in his eyes when he hears that Cucala has passed away and Castillo sees his expression and begins to weep.

With nobody seemingly willing to press charges against the three amigos, they return home with no further ado. Castillo has acquired a cutting and Gutiérrez jokes that it's a good job they brought a truck to transport it back to Canet. Castillo shows it to Cucala, who is laid out on his deathbed. She assures him that she tried her best to get the tree back and promises to take good care of the sapling. Aladren avers he is too ashamed to attend the planting, but Castillo insists that he helps her graft the twig in the exact spot where her monster had stood. Misty eyed, she wonders what life will be like in 2000 years time and hopes that humanity will finally learn from its mistakes. As the others walk away, Castillo hears a greenfinch chirping and she smiles with sad determination to make things better.

Laverty has never been able to resist honest sentiment and his mildly satirical script drips with the Capra-cornball cosiness that has become a familiar component of his Loachian diatribes. Bollain is less preachy than Loach, but she shares his left-leaning faith in working people and their readiness to uphold right in confronting their so-called betters. Yet her conviction that the millennial generation is poised to seize the initiative feels cringingly naive, especially during the feeble flash mob finale.

Bollain and Laverty do deserve credit for making Castillo such a spikily mercurial heroine, however, while their insights into tradition, legacy and family dynamics are also pertinent. Moreover, Bollain makes evocative use of Pascal Gaigne's mournful orchestral score and Sergi Gallardo's contrasting views of the golden Spanish sunlight, the open road and the soulless city centre steel, concrete and glass. She also coaxes solid performances out of the excellent Gutiérrez, Ambròs and TV actress Castillo, who just about manages to put a positive spin on delusion and deception in doing what it takes to pursue her goal. With the notable exception of Cucala (a non-professional making his acting debut), the supporting characters are pretty much ciphers, however, with Castillo's bosom and online friends being particularly poorly limned. Some of the symbolism is also cloyingly cumbersome, with the Statue of Liberty being the clumsiest totem, as it glides along Europe byways before being smashed to smithereens in a nondescript car park. Few road movies succeed in avoiding contrivance, but Laverty and Bollain seem to run out of ideas after the abduction of the statue. As a consequence, the journey becomes rather dull, as Castillo spends more time on her phone than she does conversing with Gutiérrez and Ambròs, whose revelations en route feel like something they would surely have confided long before this far-fetched odyssey. Thus, while this blend of judicious socio-political rage, grassroots activism and whimsical wit has its heart in the right place, it only just survives the numerous bumps in the road.